"Exactly 5,126 attempts to make the first bagless vacuum cleaner were failures—some catastrophic disappointments, some minor defects. It took 15 years. Prototype 5,127 was the success … Failure is painful, but it spurs on improvement like nothing else."

"I think failing is the best way to keep you grounded, curious, and humble. Success is dangerous because often you don’t understand why you succeeded. You almost always know why you’ve failed. You have a lot of time to think about it."

"Books proliferate, and occasionally sell in very large numbers, which claim to have found the rule, or small set of rules, which will guarantee business success. But business is far too complicated, far too difficult an activity to distil into a few simple commands … It is failure rather than success which is the distinguishing feature of corporate life."

"Failure is important because the first time you win (or lose), it could be luck, it could be timing, or it could be talent. It’s only after you fail once or twice and learn to rely equally on thought, analysis, and anticipation—in addition to speed, talent, and execution—that you can really call yourself an entrepreneur … In the long run, it’s mind over muscle, strategy over strength, and a healthy perspective—not just a lot of perspiration—that make someone a real success in his or her business and in the equally important rest of his or her life."

Howard Tullman (1946–), US multimedia entrepreneurSource: You Need to Be a Little Crazy: The Truth about Starting and Growing Your Business (Barry J. Moltz, 2003), Preface

"At some point, we all have to decide how we are going to fail: by not going far enough, or by going too far. The only alternative for the most successful (maybe even the most fulfilled) people is the latter."

Harriet Rubin (1952–), US authorSource: “How Will You Fail?” Fast Company (1999)

"I set a rule that people weren't allowed to send good news unless they sent around an equal amount of bad news. We had to get a balanced picture. In fact, I kind of favored just hearing about the accounts we were losing because … bad news is generally more actionable than good news."

"I had a lot of successes, but what really made me fearless was my complete failure at Zidd-Davis. Once you've lived through that, you know you can survive, and you're not as scared … There's nothing to build confidence like real achievement, but also like real failure."

Esther Dyson (1951–), US knowledge entrepreneur and government adviserReferring to her experience of being hired to start a newspaper, which flopped.Source: Interview, Reason Magazine (November 1996)

"There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes and in the eyes of others."

James Baldwin (1924–1987), US writerSource: The Price of the Ticket (1985), Introduction

"One of the most important tasks of a manager is to eliminate his people's excuses for failure."

Robert Townsend (1920–1998), US business executive and authorSource: Further Up the Organization (1984)

"Bankruptcy is a sacred state, a condition beyond conditions … attempts to investigate it are necessarily obscene like spiritualism. One knows only he has passed into it and lives beyond us, in a condition not ours."